• Congratulations to the Class of 2024 on your results!
    Let us know how you went here
    Got a question about your uni preferences? Ask us here

Interesting Q (1 Viewer)

RealiseNothing

what is that?It is Cowpea
Joined
Jul 10, 2011
Messages
4,591
Location
Sydney
Gender
Male
HSC
2013
We know that

Because -1 to the power of an even is 1 and to the power of odd is -1.

So we can take any three at a time as a product, ie

Now we want to add up all possible combinations of these. Let's split it up into 4 scenarios:

1) We choose 3 that are all even (xxx).
2) We choose 2 even and 1 odd (xxy).
3) We choose 1 even and 2 odd (xyy).
4) We choose 3 that are all odd (yyy).

Now let's work out what the answer will be if we were to randomly pick a combination from each group:

1) 3 evens = 1x1x1 = 1
2) 2 evens and 1 odd = 1x1x(-1) = -1
3) 1 even and 2 odd = 1x(-1)x(-1) = 1
4) 3 odds = (-1)x(-1)x(-1) = -1

Now let's find how many combinations we can have of each individual scenario:

1) We have 'p' amount of even integers and want to choose any 3, so it is
2) We have 2 'p' even integers and 1 'q' odd integer, so it is
3) We have 1 'p' and 2 'q', so it is
4) We have 3 'q', so it is .

Now we want to sum all 4 scenarios up to find the total sum right? And we know that scenarios 1 and 3 are always equal to 1 and scenarios 2 and 4 are always equal to -1 since we showed that just before.

So the total sum is:



Put this into alegbraic form:



Now since on the bottom of the first and last terms is a 3!, let's take out a 1/6, and then cancel out terms from top and bottom using stuff like

Note that the ones with only 2! in the denominator will have to be multiplied by 3 to make up for factorising the 1/6:



Expand the inside:



Now I'm going to just group together some terms and you will be able to see how we can further simplify from there, also notice how the -3pq and +3pq will cancel out in the above expression.



So now, notice how the first bracket is actually the binomial expansion for (p-q)^3.

Also, the second and third brackets can be factorised more, so:



Factor out a (p-q) from the bracket. Just note since p^2 - q^2 = (p-q)(p+q) due to a difference of two squares, when you factor out (p-q) you get (p+q) left over, hence:



QED.
 
Last edited:

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top